More Information About Plants Named After Animals

Commemorate a favorite pet or grow an amusing menagerie garden with plants named after animals.

Some gardeners have a coy sense of humor and like to plant gardens with amusing themes. Others like to commemorate a beloved pet by planting a symbolically named plant in the garden. In both cases, gardeners need to start their garden shopping with a list of plants named after animals. Here at Plant Delights Nursery, we have an enormous on-line plant catalog and have searched through it to create this mini-catalog of plants named after animals that also look great in the landscape.

Botanists and taxonomists who name plants will often use a unique looking plant part as inspiration for part of the species or genus name. If the plant has a part that reminds some mothball sniffing taxonomist of an animal, the taxonomist will create a Latin-based zoographical name for the genus or species. For instance, the fern genus arachniodes is named from the greek "arachnion" (spider's web) due to the resemblance of the finely dissected foliage of some species. Echinacea and echinopsis got their genus names from the similarity of parts of the plants to a spiny organism like a sea urchin, echidna (spiny anteater) or hedgehog. Leonotis and equisetum were named after lions and horses respectively, and Dracunculus was named for dragons.

More frequently, a plant is given an animal-based common name when a group of non-scientists liken a plant part or plant use to an animal. These plants named after animals can be from any language. Some English examples include: elephant ear for colocasia, alocasia and remusatia, bear's breech for acanthus, cobra lily for arisaema, goatsbeard for aruncus, and cattail for acalypha.

Also, horticultural marketers, in a bid to find a name that will generate sales, will often create plants named after animals by giving them appealing zooic cultivar names: Begonia 'Heron's Pirouette' and Bletilla 'Chinese Butterfly' for example.